Let's Turn the Question Around: I'm a Jew - What's It To You?

“I’m Muslim. What’s It To You”?

Ironically enough, an endeavor called the Civic Engagement Project is one of the sponsors of an event based around that rather rude, in-your-face question. Even better (or worse, depending on your perspective,) the event is supposed to tackle the specter of - what else? - "Islamophobia."

Since I wasn’t planning to attend the event, I think I'll answer the question to those posing it with another question: I'm Jewish. What's it to you?

A follow up question: Does the fact that the founder of your faith is said to have turned some of my ancestors into apes and pigs have an impact on the way you view Jews - and in particular, the Jews who reside in Israel, the Jewish State - in the here and now?

To return to the initial question: You're being Muslim is nothing to me. Not unless you are the sort of Muslim who hews to the problematic jihad/sharia/Islamic supremacism aspects of your faith's theology. Because if that is the type of Islam you practice, there's a genuine possibility that you might want to dhimmify or kill me and, indeed, all Jewry.

If you are not that type of Muslim - if you don't really go in for the global jihad rigmarole - then your being Muslim is inconsequential, not to mention irrelevant, to me.

That said, however, in certain circles, perhaps even in yours, my articulating an awareness of the hate speech embedded in your core holy texts, as well as my abhorrence of the evil that has been unleashed in the world today in the name of Islam, would mark be as an "Islamophobe," someone in the grip of an irrational fear of Islam. 

For the record, I am no such thing. My fears regarding the genuine threat posed to Western civilization by implacable jihads - including the ones in Iran who are well on their way to acquiring the nuclear weapons which could enable them to complete Hitler's Final Solution/Holocaust Project - are entirely, eminently and unquestionably rational.

(Cross-posted at The Megaphone.)